


Hella

by scarvenrot



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Canon Rewrite, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarvenrot/pseuds/scarvenrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man, under the pseudonym of "Bro", recounts the horrific experiences of his young adulthood that led him to believe that his closest friends were actually trying to murder him. Is he right? Or is his crippling paranoia leading him to misunderstand the harmless antics of the only people who care about him? That's up to you to decide. | Dramatic retelling of SBAHJ. And I mean that in the most serious way possible. Oh, god. | Chapter 6 update, "Dreams" and "Values".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stairs

**0.**

My friends wanted to kill me.

Before trying to argue against me and prodding me for evidence, there, let me begin by telling you a little bit about the people in question.

My closest friend—because it would be a bit too dignified to refer to him as my “best” friend—was selfish, ignorant, and at his best, completely and utterly stupid. Much like myself at the time, he indulged in what we believed were the “finer things” in life: we spent almost all of our time high off our asses, playing videogames, and avoiding the real world, all while reassuring ourselves that we were the coolest guys to walk the face of the earth. In my own way, I was almost as brainless as him, but that was me at my worst. I was a pretty normal and decent guy underneath my slacker mindset, but in no way could I say that about him.

At _his_ worst, my closest friend was manipulative, deceitful, and downright dangerous. As the years passed, I began to realize how much he was putting my life at risk, but the terrifying thing was, for so long, I couldn’t figure out a way to escape. He insisted that we hang out. Sometimes he would show up out of nowhere while I’d been drinking alone, knowing that I couldn’t turn him away when I was tipsy. Somehow, he would always talk me into doing something stupid. Something I should have known better than to agree to.

And almost always, it would end with me in horrible pain.

I’ll touch on the details of the incidents that are particularly vivid to me in a moment. It’s important to mention the second friend in question, though. A mutual friend of ours, and the only guy brave enough to hang out with the two of us (and that’s putting it loosely), was a guy who to this day I still don’t understand by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do I particularly want to. He didn’t hang out _with_ us so much as he hung out by himself in _proximity_ of us, and he had the kind of dead look on his face that was nothing short of terrifying when you caught sight of him out of the corner of your eye. Especially when you weren't expecting him to be there, watching you from the vents in your living room, or from the roof outside in the dead of a snowy night.

Those friends of mine. We'll call them Jeff, the former, and Geromy, the latter.

For simplicity’s sake, and to keep my identity safe at all costs, you can call me Bro.

 

 

**I.**

Imagine me, if you will, as a young man of average height. Slightly flabby build, nothing to really be ashamed of. Black, shaggy hair, and a bit of a probably ill-advised beard, as well as a near-perpetual look of disgust on my face. No truly notable features to mention aside from that. Giving too much away might compromise my identity, and that’s something I’m not willing to risk, after all I’ve been through.

While these incidents came over the span of several years, it isn’t difficult for me to remember the very first one. Though I didn’t realize it until much later, I could look back on that particular day and remember the overwhelming sense of unease that I felt: a feeling that would become a calling card for what I’m referring to as the “Jeff Episodes”. I’ll admit that I was stupid. It took me years to realize what he was trying to do, though I’d started mapping the incidents months before that. It was always so easy to remember them all, because they were so unnerving, always evoking in me the overwhelming sense of fear and uncertainty that was unique to those moments in my life.

The very first incident was on a Tuesday.

While most of the events preceding it are a blur, now—god, it has been several years, after all—I distinctly remember the few minutes that it took for my whole life to change. We were at my house. My mom had gotten angry at me the night before, I remember that much. Angry about my piss-poor attitude, and my total reluctance to search for a job. I was young, though, I had argued. I shouldn’t have been expected to get a job so soon. I needed time to enjoy life. And with my dad gone, she needed a man around the house, I thought to myself.

What a fucking idiot I was.

Jeff had come over to play games, and I was bringing them down to the widescreen in the living room from my bedroom, as I always did. I thought nothing of it. We’d smoked a little, before I’d gone upstairs. A lot, actually. While I was searching in my room, I heard his laughter echoing up the stairs, followed by some slight coughing. He muttered something, which I later realized was his “warning”. I’ll never forget that sound.

I tripped over the carpet, as I was about to make my way back downstairs. I distinctly remember the act of falling: how surprise struck me as an expletive left me, then horror, as my bowels sank inside me and I flew past the first few steps to tumble down the rest. I remember the feeling of my wrist snapping as I tried to stop myself, and the feeling of a nail puncturing my palm—meant to keep the carpet down, exposed for God knows what reason. I remember kneeing the banister and fracturing my shin, and hitting my head multiple times on the stairs and the wall as I fell. I remember the sharp feeling of my shoulder dislocating as I turned the corner onto the landing and toppled out into the hallway.

I barely remember those following seconds, but I do recall Jeff’s shuffling footsteps approaching me, looking up through the haze to see his face, wide-eyed and unreadable. I could barely see. My left eye was swelling shut, already. I couldn’t lift either of my heavy arms to bid him to help me, nor, for the moment, could I open my mouth to beg him to call an ambulance. He just looked down at me for what felt like forever, every inch of me in indescribable pain, and when I closed my eyes, I felt his hands grabbing me, gently, lifting me up into his arms. He was surprisingly strong. Or, at least, I would have been surprised at the time if I had been more than halfway conscious.

I blacked out for a moment. When I woke up again, I realized that he was dragging me back up the stairs, and though I thought nothing of it at the time, I know now that I should have done anything to stop him. I should have shouted, I should have kicked with my good leg. I wasn’t completely helpless, though I felt it. I just stayed limp in his arms as he pulled me up the stairs, silent. The only sounds echoing around us were the sounds of my legs dragging on the carpet, and my low moans of pain when my shin struck a stair, or my arms twisted wrong.

He stood with me at the top of the stairs for a moment, all of my weight shaking on my one good leg. I tried to look at him, but I hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on in the upstairs hallway. I could barely see anything, and what I could see was just a slight pale streak against a dark, splotchy backdrop. I tried to say his name as he looked into my face, and he snorted slightly at the gasping sound that I managed to make. He leaned close to my ear, hands knotting into fists in my shirt.

“I warned you about stairs, Bro,” he murmured, as he pushed my body down the stairwell a second time. “I _told_ you, dog.”

I passed out halfway through the fall, but when I was in the hospital in the following weeks, my injuries were impossibly worse. I knew that couldn’t have been the only time. It must have kept happening. But in the back of my mind, I doubted myself: I’d been so high at the time, so stupid…maybe I really had been hurt that badly on the first fall. Maybe I just couldn’t remember.

I must have just imagined the entire thing. After all, Jeff visited me every day in the hospital and even drove me to physical therapy afterward, a few times. Feeling guilty, I let it go for nearly two years.

I should have known better.


	2. Mom | Jelly

**II.**

Though I would try to push the episode with the stairs out of my mind for the entirety of the next two years, the next notable situation happened only a week or so after I’d been released from the hospital. I’d been in for nearly a month, undergoing various surgeries for the injuries I’d sustained. There were too many to count. None of my limbs were anything more than minimally functional. Both of my eyes had swollen shut. I’d fractured my right cheek, and sprained my neck. I was completely helpless.

After I’d healed as well as I could in the hospital, I was released back into my mom’s custody, and she brought me home. I had physical therapy appointments every week, three times a week, to help heal my hips, shoulders, and left knee. For the first bit of it—or at least, for the parts that I remember with absolute certainty—Jeff was nothing but kind to me, driving me to my appointments when my mom couldn’t, and it was so much easier to just wave aside the idea that he was actually responsible for most of my suffering.

He helped me make sure that I was taking all of my medication on time, and therein lies the difficulty behind what I’m about to relate to you. I was in nearly constant pain, with bones and joints broken, fractured, and bruised all over my body, and because of that, I was on meds around the clock. My brain was so fogged for such a long time that I have no real way of knowing if this particular episode actually happened, if I was only somewhat confused about what was going on, or if it didn’t even happen at all. Considering everything else, though, I’m almost entirely convinced that it _did_ happen. Why wouldn’t it have? One of his favorite things both before and after that shit with the stairs was keeping me so fucking blazed I could barely walk straight. Back then, though, I still trusted him. He was still my friend.

I’m ashamed of how far gone I was, at the time. I know it’s stupid to feel that way. I really couldn’t help it, considering he was the one managing my medicine, nine times out of ten, but it still makes me sick, especially if this shit actually happened the way that I remember it happening. I have no clue what day it could’ve been, only that it definitely took place very soon after I’d gone home from the hospital. Jeff was over, again. Why not? My mom was nothing but grateful to him for calling the ambulance that had saved my life. That’s another reason why I don’t know for sure if what happened actually happened. Mom had been home a lot more often, but I don’t know if she was actually there, or not. Was she there, or at work, that day? I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know.

God.

Jeff and I were in the living room, and I don’t even know that much for certain. We must have been, though. I could barely make it down the stairs, let alone up, so it was better for me to sleep in the living room, for the time being. So we were definitely there, right? Mom had set up a bed for me on the sofa, and that was where Jeff and I must have been, playing games. I think. I’d just had my meds.

I have no fucking idea.

I’m pretty sure that I have memories of looking toward him as he sat back down next to me, coming back from somewhere I can’t recall, and I noticed that his pants were inexplicably gone. He was sitting bare-assed on my “bed”, like it was no big deal. Whether it was a dream or not, I don’t know, but I know that I was pissed off, at the time. I turned to him to ask him where his fucking pants were. I remember the whole room seemed to blur as I turned, like my head was moving in slow motion through a hot, dense fog. I nearly fell over as he laughed at me, under his breath, like it was no big deal. The sound of it echoed in my head, like my skull was completely empty.

Jeff smiled. “I took them off because I was banging your mom for a minute there,” he said, but he sounded so, so far away.

For some length of time after that—I don’t know how long it was, and I don’t _want_ to know—I found myself collapsed in the wheelchair I’d been using since the accident, so drugged up that I couldn’t move any part of myself but my eyes. I was in the corner of my mom’s room, facing it, and I could see clearly from the way the light was being cast on the wall that the lamp in the opposite corner had been knocked over. I watched Jeff’s shadow beating my mother’s in the face, and I heard her moaning, in pain, begging me to help.

I tried to move. Really. I swear I did. I swear that I tried. As hard as I fucking could.

He kept beating her. My eyes stayed fixated on their shadows on the wall. Eventually, she went quiet, and all I saw was the shadow of his body rocking back and forth on top of her still one. I don’t know how long it was, or if it had even been real. At some point, I blinked and his face was right up next to mine, his mouth half-open, half-grinning crookedly.

And I could move, again.

I tried to get off of the couch. Jeff reached over to stop me from breaking my tailbone for the second time. Or maybe it was to grab my still-tender shoulder. He chuckled under his breath, lifting me from my wheelchair.

“And now… _you’re_ banging her.”

I remember the feeling of my numbed legs dragging across the floor, and the sound of his weird, amused giggling grating in my ears. I backed out again before I reached the bed, or the floor, or wherever it was that I was going.

When I woke up, Jeff was telling me that it was time for me to take my medicine again.

 

 

**III.**

I was slightly more lucid, in the coming weeks. Mom didn’t say anything to me about what I thought had happened, so I had no way of knowing if it was real or not. She seemed exactly the same as ever, and there was no way in hell I was going to ask her if Jeff had actually done that. I didn’t even know how to describe it. Everything was so fragmented and impossible to confirm. So, like the stairs, I had to let it go. For the time being.

Jeff kept me on a strict regimen of pain medication. Even when I was able to walk again, though, it was hard on my knee and my hips, and he had to make sure I was keeping up with my pills. He’d laugh at the way it made me slur my words and stumble. Stumbling was the absolute fucking worst. Whenever I felt for a second that I was about to fall again, the sense of terror and helplessness that rushed into me overpowered me, triggered by my memories of toppling down the stairs to the bottom landing. I could barely sleep, because I kept having dreams of falling that would end with me jolting awake, soaked in cold sweat. Jeff insisted that I take more medication to help me sleep.

It worked, of course. And I was fucking _out._

He stayed at the house, a few times, when Mom was too tired to be at my beck and call. I was more than a little uneasy, having him there, but there was nothing I could do about it, really. He’d done nothing wrong, or at least nothing that I could recall with absolute certainty. The things I was unsettled about were still two big _maybe_ s, and I couldn’t say anything because of that. He was taking care of me, after all. I was completely helpless, and totally under his control. All I could do was surrender.

He watched me sleep. But he must have slept, himself. He must have, in those weeks. I never saw him do it, but he had to have been asleep, at some point.

He _had_ to.

During the day, he’d feed me. On days when I was really bad off on the meds and could barely speak at all, though, it would start up again. He’d fuck with me. Make me something for lunch that I clearly couldn’t eat, or over-salt something because I couldn’t react quickly enough to tell him to stop. One that I remember particularly well was a day in early summer when he’d boiled hot dogs for us to eat, and he set the condiments on the table at different distances away from me. I just stared at them for a few minutes, half-conscious, before looking over at him. He was looking back at me expectantly, black eyes bottomless. He said nothing. He knew I couldn’t reach far enough to get something that would normally go on a hot dog. The only thing within reach was one of those Welch’s squeezable jelly things. Grape. I remember.

He stared at me, as if daring me to ask him for the ketchup. He put it on his own hot dog, set it back down across the table, and ate.

I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t fucking get up. And in the back of my mind, I was so sure that if I asked for the ketchup, he’d do something to me or my mom that I couldn’t even imagine.

The pot of hot water was still on the stove. Simmering. He’d never turned it off.

I put the jelly on the hot dog. He laughed.

“How high do you even have to _be_ to _do_ something like that…?”

I was convinced, an hour later, that I’d imagined the whole thing. Jeff was unbeatable, even then.


	3. Squirrel | Hug

**IV.**

It was almost two months before anything happened again. And when it did, it was so subtle I didn’t even realize that it fit into his pattern until months after I’d begun to figure out the others.

It wasn’t always straight up just him doing some fucked up shit to me, after all. Sometimes he coerced me into doing things without me even realizing it.

My hips were kind of fucked up, even well after they’d healed. Physical therapy had helped to loosen them up somewhat, but they were stiff for months after the fact. I was told that I should increase my physical activity to get them back to normal, but of course I ignored that sound medical advice and prescribed my own treatment of even more bed rest. Jeff was inclined to agree.

Honestly, I didn’t want to go anywhere. Even then, I remember feeling more than a bit paranoid.

I spent most of the next few months playing games even more than I had before. At least before the incident with the stairs, I’d gone out every once in a while. At that point, I couldn’t even be bothered to go out to the movies. Mom didn’t want to intrude, though. She was worried about me. I’d been fucked up pretty badly by my fall, after all. After nearly seeing me die, she was much more reluctant to try to tell me to leave her.

Jeff brought me new games on a weekly basis, and renewed my stash of unmentionable substances more frequently than that. I thought nothing of it. The events of the past two months were such a blur to me by then, I was honestly just happy to have something to settle me back into that foggy state of mind. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to smoke, and drink, and eat, and sleep.

It was bad for me, though, and Jeff continued to fuck with me when he shouldn’t have. Most of it was harmless enough, though. Most of it.

Thursday. I remember this happening on a Thursday. I was deep under, and I couldn’t feel shit. I remember him leaning over and nudging me in the arm, whispering in my ear as he pointed out the screen door to a squirrel sitting on my porch. He laughed in that eerie way he always did, again, and even though I could barely understand what was happening, I remember it sent a shiver down my spine.

“There he goes,” Jeff mumbled, his mouth crooked against my ear. “The squirrel…has your game.”

I know it was stupid. I know. I knew it the day after, too. Hell, I knew it two hours after. But when he said it, I had to get up and chase after that fucking squirrel. I ran outside and tripped and fell all the fuck over the yard, terrorizing the thing while Jeff watched me from the window, snickering.

It took me over half an hour to chase the squirrel into Mom’s compost bin, and I’m not going to lie about this. I grabbed a rock from the garden and I beat its damn brains in. It didn’t have my fucking game. I know. I _know._

When I stumbled back into the house, panting and sweating and grass stained, Jeff had already lost interest in me, and he was playing something by himself. He saw the blood on my forearm and got that weird look on his face, like he’d stared at me when I’d first reached the bottom of the stairs on that Tuesday all those weeks ago.

He moved his legs off of the couch to make room for me to sit down again, grunting to himself as he focused back on the TV screen.

“Maybe they’re right,” he grumbled. “Maybe sometimes videogames… _do_ cause violence.”

I sat down on the couch next to him and freaked out quietly for a few minutes. I’d fucked up my knee again, but I didn’t really care, at the time.

When Mom found the squirrel, I told her a cat had killed it. I think she believed me.

 

 

**V.**

It was a Saturday. And he hugged me, when I told him I’d pre-ordered a game that had gotten particularly good reviews, that season. He was so impressed. I remember him grabbing me by the shoulders, gingerly—just tightly enough to get a grip on me—and him pulling me into him, telling me it was about time we did this.

“We’re doing it, man,” he murmured. “We’re making this happen. You and me.”

His voice was quiet, and ragged. I half-expected him to let out a chuckle or something, but he didn’t. He just stood there, and held me.

After a few seconds, he started to tremble. That went on for about a minute, and then he let me go.

Three hours later, as I was getting ready to shower, I found a weird stain on the back of my shirt, like his hand had been bleeding as he’d knotted his fist in the fabric. There was dried blood on the back of my neck, too, and a weird trail heading down my back that I later realized was his bloody saliva.


	4. Big Game | New Friend

**VI.**

I remember distinctly that Jeff used to pretend to like things that I liked just to rub me the wrong way. He’d always go out of his way to buy things before I could, or read up on shit before I had the chance, or get tickets to things that I couldn’t afford. He especially liked buying tickets to sporting events, always referring to them as “the big game”, knowing that I knew exactly what that meant, because I’d wanted to go and been talking about wanting to go for weeks in advance.

Always. Always, the big game.

And I would grit my teeth and tell him how jealous I was. Because, let’s face it: I _was_ jealous. Better to just admit it than deny it. He would have known, either way. And he probably would have gotten pissed off, if I’d lied to him. It was better not to risk that sort of thing.

Somehow, he always got the best seat, too. I can’t remember a time when he did that, when I didn’t turn the game on to see him sitting center court, right in the middle of the action. He always managed to get so close to the players, and he always seemed to know when I was watching. He knew where the cameras were, and he’d look at them. Constantly. Smirking up at me while I watched from the couch at home.

I asked him once why he didn’t let me pay for a second ticket, for myself. He told me the price was more than I’d be able to afford in a year.

Maybe he was fucking right. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

 

 

**VII.**

I can’t tell you when I met Geromy, because technically, I don’t think we ever actually “met”. I remember seeing him for the first time outside of my house, and not really knowing if he belonged there, or if he’d come by on his own and just happened to be lost in thought. I guess Jeff must have brought him, but at the time, I wasn’t really thinking about that. That day was horrible, and it’s one of the more vivid instances in my memory.

It happened about five months after the episode with the stairs, and it was a Monday. I remember that at that point in time, my mom had started acting a bit more reluctant to have Jeff over to the house, but I never asked her why that was. He started hanging out even more often, which I hadn’t thought was possible, but he found a way. Jeff always found a way.

He’d been leaving clothes behind, and he always seemed to lose things by leaving them laying around the house. Sometimes Mom would pick his things up, thinking they were mine, and wash his laundry with mine, which was kind of an uncomfortable surprise, especially the first few times she did it. It’s really fucking unpleasant to find someone else’s underwear stacked neatly with yours on the edge of your bed: especially someone you can’t exactly trust.

He was definitely getting the feeling that I was more nervous around him than I had been before. I think that day especially was when I actually started to realize something fucked up was going on, though I wouldn’t act on it for a long time after that. Jeff seemed to notice the change in my behavior even before I did, which to this day sends a shiver up my spine: knowing that he knew me _that well._ He’d thought up a plan to drag me back over to his side before I even knew that I was trying to save myself from him.

If only I hadn’t tripped down those fucking stairs. I tell myself that, now, but I honestly have no idea if it would have helped. He probably would have gotten to me, anyway. Probably. Knowing him. It’s fucking horrifying to think that I didn’t stand a chance, though. So in a way, it’s better to blame myself for it all, as fucked up as that is.

“Bro, have you seen my socks around anywhere?” he asked, innocuous. He’d snuck up beside me while I was playing something—I don’t remember what, and honestly, it’s not important—and he stared at me intensely, like he was sure I knew something he didn’t. I remember getting angry with him and yelling at him about the fact that he always seemed to leave his fucking socks _everywhere_ in my house, along with half of the other shit that he owned, and yet he could never find any of it. I got so into yelling at him that I didn’t even notice when he’d left the living room and snuck out the door into the garage with my fucking car keys.

The sock ruse had been a distraction. But how the hell was I supposed to know that?! What kind of person did the shit that Jeff did?! No other person on earth acted like him. Not a single goddamn one.

I didn’t realize he was gone until the garage door opened, and he was pulling out of my driveway, completely unconcerned about what he was doing, and just entirely pleased with himself for succeeding in taking the car out from under my nose with such a stupid piece of bait. I ran outside after him, and that was when I first saw Geromy, just. Standing in my front yard, staring off into space with that dead look in his eyes. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to catch Jeff, maybe I would have talked to him. But I didn’t. And honestly, that was the closest I ever got to him without feeling like maybe I should have taken a step or two _away_ from him.

Jeff backed out of the driveway and right across the fucking street, through a damn park, a field, and toward one of those manmade pond things that Canadian geese seem to fucking live for. I remember thinking that he was going to stop before he got to the pond, but then, I also remember him driving straight the fuck into it, going over sixty, backwards, and skidding through the water until he just floated out into the middle of the goddamn pond.

It wasn’t even deep enough to swallow the entire car. It just kind of sank a little, then settled, half-covered with dirty, murky pond water, and I don’t know exactly what I said, but I know it took me a few minutes to say it. Or rather, scream it. I couldn’t believe what he’d done. It made no fucking sense at all. He’d just asked me if I’d seen his socks laying around, anywhere. Just. His fucking socks. And he’d fucking _ruined_ my car.

He just fucking sat in the driver’s seat, laughing like it was the funniest shit in the world, while I waded out into the pond, shrieking at him at the top of my lungs while a bunch of strangers gawked at us from the shore of the stupid pond. I caught sight of Geromy again, standing off by himself, pretty far away from the pond: far enough away to just be a weird lump in a yellow t-shirt a few hundred yards away. But I didn’t think about him until much later, after they’d towed my dead car out of the water and muttered that they hoped I had some damn good insurance.

At that point, he was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jeff. Even though Geromy was nobody, then, from that day on, I couldn’t think about Jeff without thinking about him, too. And I still can’t explain why.


	5. Angle | Skills

**VIII.**

I didn’t let Jeff back into the house for a couple of months after he wrecked my car. I remember that time being made up of some of the more peaceful weeks that I spent as Jeff’s “friend”, and with good reason: him being away from me actually allowed me to relax, more often than not. Mom had the locks changed to the front and back doors of the house early on, _and_ she had the garage code reset, just to make sure he couldn’t get in. I don’t know if that contributed to keeping him away or not, but I do know that she thought that it had worked, for the most part. Either way, it was probably a smart move.

The first month was one of the most relaxing months of my life. I didn’t do shit for four straight weeks. Not only was I pretty fucking miserable about my car, but I just didn’t feel like doing anything in general, so for the most part, all I did was sit around and watch TV and nap occasionally. I didn’t smoke anything all month, and I realized that I’d forgotten what it was like to be so clear-headed. In a way, I think I was trying to cleanse myself of him. But of course, all good things will come to an end, one way or another. I couldn’t keep it up forever. I know that, for one fleeting moment, I thought that I could, but even then I knew how stupid that idea was. He was going to come back. He had nowhere else to go, as far as I knew.

It had been a month and a few days when I saw Jeff again. I was in my kitchen, trying to pour myself a glass of milk. I say “trying” here because, in all honesty, my shoulders were still weak from the fall I’d taken, even after all that physical therapy. It was hard to move my arm to lift the carton in a normal way while I wasn’t high enough to dull the pain, and I’d been spilling it all over the place for days. Mom was sick of cleaning up my messes. So, I was struggling with the carton, trying to find an angle that wouldn’t send a sharp ache up my shoulder and send milk spilling all over the counter.

I looked up, and when my eyes locked onto Jeff’s face peeking in through the kitchen window at me, my stomach sank into my bowels. He looked at me as if he’d been seeing me every day for the past month: hell, like he was just standing next to me in my kitchen instead of ten feet away in my mom’s flower bed, watching me through a pane of dirty glass like some kind of maniac. He smirked at me, watching me fumble with the milk carton, and when I dropped it on the counter, he was distracted by a squirrel. It was one that was a lot like the one I’d inadvertently killed, months ago, and it was all I could do to try to keep from thinking about that bullshit as I cleaned up the mess I’d made with the milk and listened to his weird giggling, the sound of it muffled by the glass.

 

 

**IX.**

I let him back in a few weeks later. Mom was really upset with me, and I understood why, but for the most part we avoided talking about it. She’d smartened up about him long before I did, and for the longest time, a huge part of me was in confused denial that it might have been because he’d actually raped her, all those months ago. Nothing connected, back then. I was still so fucking confused about everything. The drugs combined with Jeff’s weird powers of manipulation were enough to keep my mind going in circles for weeks on end, to the point that I normally just gave up even trying to figure anything out.

He was pretty goddamn serious about never “losing” me again, after that. He barely let me leave his sight, except to piss, and even then, months later I would wonder if he’d put cameras in my bathroom and bedroom to monitor what I was doing. He was possessive of me in the weirdest way: a way that I can’t really even describe, or at least not interpret. All I have to tell about are his actions, and I guess you can decide on your own what they all meant, in the end.

I tried to be extra nice to him, once he was allowed back into the house. Just to keep him from pulling another stunt like he had with the car. It seemed easier, at the time. Stupid of me, I know. But I was still weak, and it was almost inevitable that he would have found his way back into my life, sooner or later, so giving in to what he wanted was probably the only real choice I had. I complimented him a lot, even when it wasn’t warranted. I acted jealous of his gaming, even though most of the time his performance was really nothing special.

There was a crucial moment then, though. One day when I asked him where he’d even learned to do…something. Or where he’d “gotten those skills”, or something like that. I barely even remember what I said. What was important was what he said back to me, as he turned his head and lazily smiled at me, like he was telling a fucking joke.

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”

He’d have to kill me, he said.

And it made sense, suddenly. Or at least, parts of it. That day, that Sunday, was the day I began to see the light. All of the fucked up memories I had of times I’d spent with him seemed to be tied together with a weird, suddenly obvious thread of suspicion, and I’ll admit it: I was terrified of him, from that moment on. I didn’t know how to prove my fears—not yet—but I vowed that I’d figure out what the hell was going on, and that I’d do something about it.

That day was when I finally started to admit to myself that something was seriously fucking wrong with Jeff.

And I needed to do something about it, or I was going to end up dead.


	6. Dreams | Values

**X.**

It’s so hard to relate half of this shit, because if I’m completely honest, Jeff _did_ have moments of normalcy. Sometimes, he would actually let me relax, when we were hanging out, and he would be the most normal guy I’d ever known. He talked to me about shit that he liked, and things that he wanted to do, and games he’d been looking into. All in a completely casual way. It was like there was nothing weird about our relationship. We were just two friends, hanging out. It was so normal it almost felt _wrong_ , honestly.

He told me about his dreams, once. He said he dreamed about being a basketball star, and playing a little one-on-one with a player he never really identified: he just called him “The Big Man”, like I was supposed to know who that was. I pretended I did. I mean, it was just easier not to ask questions. Besides that, I just didn’t want to break him out of whatever peaceful reverie he was in that was allowing him to not be underhandedly psychotic, for once.

It was a perfectly normal dream, in all honesty. I think everyone has probably had a dream like that, where they meet and get to hang out with their favorite celebrity. Jeff even laughed at the absurdity of it all: he was in no way athletic, and he seemed to recognize that when he started talking about how high The Big Man could jump, in his dreams.

“He’d fucking run at me with the ball, you know?” he said, perfectly normal, perfectly safe. “And just jump, going in for the dunk, right? And out of fucking nowhere, he’s just like…six…ten…twenty feet in the fucking air, going for the hoop, and they both just keep getting higher and higher. That shit is unreal. I mean, air like that doesn’t even happen, most of the time. It’s like some Tony Hawk grade bullshit.”

“Sounds like it, man.” I had to reply, smiling weakly at him.

“And then I called you over to check out just how much air he was getting, and I was like…dude, bring your ruler so you can see how fucking insane this is!” Jeff laughed at the thought. It was pretty ridiculous. “And then we spent so much time arguing about how to use the ruler that he just fucking floated away to who the fuck knows where.”

“…Wow. Sounds like some intense shit.”

“It fucking was, bro. Let me tell you: it fucking _was._ ”

We didn’t even get high, that day. We ordered pizza, and Jeff actually paid for it. We watched Space Jam and had a great fucking time. For once, he was actually the best friend that I wanted him to be.

 

 

**XI.**

My problem was that I kept letting him do that shit to me. Tricking me into letting him in, I mean. I trusted him, when shit like that happened. I trusted him almost completely. I mean, I could remember him fucking up in the past, of course, but it was more of a dull annoyance than an unforgivable grudge when he was being such a good guy to me. When I wasn’t mad at him or freaked out about shit he was doing, I couldn’t even remember half of what had happened when I’d fallen down the stairs. When I was pissed, though, I knew he’d dragged me up them and pushed me down, again. It was that kind of thing. It was fucking dangerous. And I was fucking stupid.

When he did shit like that—making me trust him again, I mean—it would leave me open for shit that he pulled when we were in public. A particularly notable instance that I remember was when I let him come to the grocery store with me, and he kept riling me up about how fucking stupid it was for the store to stock ten types of the same fucking thing. Like, twenty different brands and styles of motherfucking _beans._ And—

…No, see? Even now, I’m getting pissed about it. That’s how influential that bastard is.

I got so fucking mad about how there wasn’t just one fucking distinct brand for me to buy that made sense. I didn’t want any of this _in water, not in water, in simple syrup, low sodium, no sugar added, with seasoning, pitted, sliced, cubed,_ fucking et cetera bullshit. Jeff told me if I was so pissed about it, I should go and talk to the manager about why their store was such a shithole of “values”.

I don’t remember the details of the conversation with the manager. Honestly, I don’t remember there _being_ much of a conversation. All I really remember is that I ended up punching the poor guy because he didn’t know how to help me, and like hell he could actually do anything about what the manufacturers provided the store with. He was a nobody, in terms of employees. I know that now. And I know he must have tried to explain that to me at the time, but I was Hulking out, or some shit, for a reason I still don’t really understand. I was out of control, and it was shameful. God. It’s so infuriating to remember that shit.

Of course the police had to get involved. Once I’d punched the manager—so hard the poor guy fell to the floor with a bloody nose—one of the other employees tackled me and held me down until the cops got there and arrested me. At that point I was practically begging for forgiveness, and Jeff was nowhere to be found. I remember seeing Geromy as the cops were pushing me into the back of their car, though. Just standing there by the door of the store, watching me, wearing that same yellow shirt that I’d first seen him in.


End file.
